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From childhood's hour I have not been As others were; I have not seen As others saw; I could not bring My passions from a common spring. Alone, Edgar Allan Poe
Crying is for people who deserve it; that release. I don’t fucking deserve shit.
I know I can’t be the only one; I can’t be the only one built to get off on the pain. But I’ve never met a girl that got this crazy, this quick. She’s fucking smiling while I hold a knife to her throat.
“I know a devil when I see one.” “And just how many devils have you met?” I ask her, leaning down close, the blade still against her neck. I hear her swallow. “Not many,” she admits, “but every time I look in the mirror, there’s one staring back at me.”
“What’s wrong with you, Ella Christian? Why’re you so fucked up?”
I think about how I’m always angry. I always want to hurt someone. I always feel like I’m .2 seconds away from snapping. From wrapping my car around a tree. But I can’t leave my brothers. I can’t leave my family. Let go.
“Elijah wants to…discuss it.” I grit my teeth. “He said we can’t kill everyone that upsets us, apparently.”
“You’re obsessed with her, but I’m not sure if you understand a fucking thing about love.”
I know I can leave. I know he can’t keep me here. I know that, despite the fact he indulged me in helping me get my mom’s screams out of my head last night, he’s not going to tie me to the bed and make me stay here. But maybe I want him to.
Letting go of one thought, drifting to the next, it’s a way to control the anger. Move past it. Become detached from that emotion. Reach for a different one.
Monsters always get away with more in the dark.
but I guess when you’re raised with monsters, those with the dullest teeth seem the most angelic. It’s like the movies, where you put a bigger villain in so when you compare him to the other villain, that one seems like an upstanding kind of guy, even though he’s a rapist or murderer or whatever.
“Don’t you have a girlfriend or something?” I can’t help but laugh. “If I had a girlfriend, why would I have fucked you?” She frowns as she looks up at me. Her eyes never leave mine. I know she’s seen the tattoo on my face, but she never really looks at it. I like that. “Maybe you two had a fight. Shit happens.” “God, Ella, what kind of relationships have you had?” She narrows her eyes at me. “So you don’t have a girlfriend?” “No.” Just a girl locked in my basement.
If she has a boyfriend, I’ll just throw him off of a cliff so I can keep fucking her. “Do you often cheat on your boyfriend with strange men you meet in the woods?” “I don’t have a boyfriend. I just moved here a few weeks ago. And you weren’t strange. You were Natalie’s friend.”
“I just want to be alone. I don’t like to talk.” I’m momentarily stunned into silence. Not many people would have the balls to say that to anyone they just met, let alone someone who just cooked for them, even if it was processed noodles.
My ex never hurt me to benefit me. It was all for him. With Maverick, it seemed like it was for both of us. A shared pain. The kind God himself might give me. And Maverick could be god. I’ve already fell to my knees for him.
If this was a movie, it’d be a dark romantic comedy. Maverick would turn out to be a really nice guy who doesn’t like hitting me and just does it to indulge me. He’d sweep me off my feet with large fries and thick milkshakes. He’d kill my mom, burn this trailer to the ground. He’d marry me, tie me up in bed (but never leave me alone there), fuck me until I wasn’t numb anymore. Until I felt real pain. Until I felt his pain. Until he broke, too, and told me all of his scary stories. Why he’s got an inverted cross on his face.
That’s part of our movie. The foolish girl thinking she can cleanse the sins of the devil himself. But maybe she can.
I have so many things I need to do today, and I want to do exactly none of them. I want to barricade myself in a closet, get high as fuck, maybe snort a line. Disappear into my head and let my own monsters eat me alive. I want to feel something bad.
Most people in Alexandria know of us, but there’s a difference between knowing of us, and knowing how we operate. People know of the Masons. They know of Beggar’s Bennison. They know of the Royals, but do they know what they do? Of course not. And people who find out? Well, they end up getting killed before they can speak, and then their deaths are ruled ‘suicide’. Epstein didn’t kill himself. Anyone with half a brain knows that.
I’m not an animal person. It’s hard to keep something else alive when you’re barely holding onto your own fucking sanity.
“Do you want me to be mean to you?” I feel a thrill of something I don’t want to feel rush up and down my spine. Do I want him to be mean? Yes, my lips beg me to form the words. Hurt me, so I know my place. Hurt me, so I know what I’m doing here. What I am to you.
I’m not by any means in love with him, but I already feel myself becoming attached. It’s part of my problem. It’s why I let Shane fuck me. It’s why I like when my mom screams at me just as much as I hate it. Lapping up affection. And this, days with this crazy, crazy boy…it’s making me feel a little unstable all over again.
I have to believe that as fucking horrible as Jeremiah is, there’s some part of him that’s…decent. Sid loved him. Probably loves him still. Something in him must have made him worthy of that love.
He’s so angry about the world, about things he refuses to talk about, and I’m starving for attention. He gives it so well. Most of it is painful and bruising and bad, but it’s attention. And sometimes…sometimes he’s sweet.
I have no idea why he’s in such a bad mood, but I don’t really think he needs a reason. He’s just always angry. How exhausting. How…relatable.
The thing about Ella is she doesn’t like nice. She doesn’t like calm. I think that’s why she goes to that fucking school. I think that’s why I fucking like her. I think she enjoys our arguments, and I think… I think I do too.
“You alright, man?” I ask him. He puts the flask back in his hoodie pocket, turns away from me, flexing his jaw. “None of us are alright, Maverick,”
The sun is up, I can see from the small amount of light that trickles in from the blackout curtains. That used to drive me nuts. Blackout should mean no light comes in, but apparently, unless you suction the curtains to the damn window, some light will always find its way in.
“You’re jealous.” I can’t believe it. “You’re fucking jealous that I…that I had a girl locked in my basement? You’re jealous?”
“I thought you were like me. I thought you were searching for someone to…love you. To hurt you. Heal you.”
I thought you were better than what I knew. But you’re just scared. You’re scared to open up. Scared to own what you want. Scared of whatever secrets you’re keeping because you think they’ll make me run. So, what do you do?” I take a step toward him and his eyes don’t leave mine even as I hold the knife up. “You do something you know I’ll hate. Something you know will hurt me. So I’ll walk out and leave and you’ll never have to open up.”
I’m no better than Lucifer. Than my father. Than Jeremiah. I’m no better than the 6. Than every other dumb fuck on this planet lucky enough to find a girl who looks at them like they’re god and then makes sure to spit in their fucking face while they’re already on their knees.
What kind of nineteen-year-old wants to get hit by a stranger? The same kind that wants to remember what it’s like to fucking feel: attention, hate, some sort of cruelty to remind them that they’re alive.
That cruelty. That fucking chaos. It makes her feel like someone cares. Cares enough to hurt her. To make her learn a lesson. To want to teach her, like I do, even if it’s with violent hands.
I can never be the type of man she needs. I can never be the type of man anyone needs. I can’t even be who I need.
I don’t wanna go anywhere you’re not going, even if you take me straight to hell.
Jeremiah seemed like a complete psychopath in the few minutes I endured his company. Not only that, but he was a hot psychopath. I let him kiss me.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. Shakespeare wrote that in “Richard II”, and goddamn do I feel it. Everything I do nowadays seems like a fucking waste of time, unless I’m with Ella.
in the pain, it’s hard to remember. It’s hard to think. But when the ache goes away, it always comes back.
But my mind knows about me, even if I want it to forget. Even if I want it to stuff away all those dark, dark things. Or even worse, the things that make me feel. That remind me that I’m alive. I’m not a psychopath. I feel everything.
Jeremiah Rain might actually be better than this. Sid might have made the right decision.
I hesitate, but she yanks away and…I let her go. I won’t be Lucifer. I won’t be my father. I won’t be every man in the fucking 6. If my girl wants to do something, she’s gonna fucking do it.
“Memento mori.” Remember death. “It will come for us all, Mav. Even me, and considering they’re still not very happy with me…” I hear a smile in her words, but I hear the pain, too. I hear the hurt. “Maybe sooner than later. But not today.” Her fingers graze my cheek, but I still don’t look up. “Not today.”
“I love him so much,” Sid whispers, pain in her words. “And that’s why I have to leave him.” Sometimes you leave the things you love, to keep them safe from just how strong your love can be. Because you love them enough to save them from yourself.
As I taste his tears on my tongue, I realize that love is strange. It can be mad, and it can be a cruel sort of chaos. It can be violent and terrible and damaging. That part I’ve understood, since I was a kid. What I didn’t get was that…it’s okay. It doesn’t matter how awful it is. There is no right way to love. There’s no wrong way, either, not really. It’s out of our hands. Love is love, and it meets people exactly where they’re at.
Maybe we just are what we are, and no kind words or tearful moments will change the dark inside of us. Maybe we’re all born a little wrong. Maybe some people get to grow right, with love and care and attention. But the rest of us, we stay wrong, and we harden.
He’s not any less damaged than when we first met, and neither am I. It’s not even that our broken pieces fit well together; they don’t. It’s that we’re willing to step in the glass, bleed a little for each other; that’s what matters. That’s what our love is. Broken, bloody, and perfect.
Jeremiah reaches over me to undo the cuffs. “I’m tired of playing these fucking games with you.” Those last words are bitter. A little violent. And I can’t help but smile. That’s the boy I know. A boy of ruin.
